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Oi navarcoi! fleet battle wargame rules

After sculpting my own minis despite the availability of perfectly fine ranges, I am going to take another totally unnecessary bold step: writing my own rules.


As you know, so far I have been playing with He Hemetera Talassa, which is a very nice ruleset based on the Fire and Fury engine. It is one of the few rules of which I shared the basic philosophy – that fleet rules should put players in control of squadrons, not of single ships (that's a trierarch's job!). Of course I modified it accordingly to my own view of what ancient warfare was, of how I liked a game to play and also to focus it more on V century warfare, the era of the Great Persian wars and of the Peloponnesian war: the era of the triereis.


I was gonna publish my house rules here. I started putting them altogether. I then realized that, piece by piece, I had changed significantly every rule except movement! What emerged was a completely different set, which had its own design in terms of key mechanism and basic philosophy. It was only logical to take an additional step and make it as a new rules.

So you can download the first draft here below. The provisional title is Oi navarcoi! This 1.0 version has not been tested yet, but will soon be. I would be glad for you to give it a try and let me know what you think! I need playtesters!!


[WATCH OUT! this version is now obsolete! You will always find the latest version on the Oi Navarcoi dedicated page of this website]



I want to share here a few comments on the design and basic mechanism, so you know why I made the choices I made. I wanted the game to be focused on squadrons, as in HHT. I wanted the players to be mainly focused on bringing their squadrons in melee in good order, and in the most advantageous positions compared to the enemy. After that, players will need to rely on their trierarchs, crews, and on the God’s (i.e., on the dices).


I wanted players to be able to give orders to the whole fleet. However, if I cast the players only as the strategos, the overall commander, it would be boring because the strategoi's degree of control during battle was very limited. Their major task was to define a battle plan the evening before, with their trierachs and navarcoi, after dinner. So I came out with the idea of signals, which provide an advantage to the player who did develop some general idea of a plan, but still let him play his squadrons.


I wanted to keep everything simple. I choose a 2d6 test for all core mechanism. This is used for manouvers, melee and morale tests. It provides me with a nice curve of results and allows me to control results easily. It does not work well with many modifiers, but then I did not want many modifiers!


I wanted a game were the overall context of a battle is crucial, otherwise it can easily become a “line them up and roll dices” affair. This is why I adopted (stole…) the side exit idea from Check your Six, which makes it important to control the sea lanes as an additional task for the strategoi, and also why I am developing the scenarios, which will provide specific objectives and challenges.


I wanted the specificities of V century warfare in. I wanted amphibian actions embedded into the rules, since so many battles had a land dimension (Cyzicus, Philos…). I wanted melee as an attritional affair, with both squadrons to slowly grind down until one’s morale would suddenly break. I assume a melee between squadrons of similar strength and morale would probably very soon degenerate into a free-for-all furball of individual duels. Admirals would lose what little command and command and control capability they had, and both squadrons would gradually lose coherence. Both would lose a ship at the time, until one of the two sides suddenly would realize it was getting overcome and would lose morale and give up, leaving the field in disorder.


I developed the diekplous and periplous as specific manouvers. The attempted diekplous can conclude in 4 different ways (see here for my view on what the diekplous is). If it is successful, the performing squadron performs a breakthrough and can then attack the enemy from the back. It can be aborted on time, with the attacking squadron that realizes it is going to fail and is able to perform an anastrophe and reform away from the enemy. It can fail badly, with the defender equally messed up its manouver and thus generating a messy melee, with everyone involved already disordered. Or the attackers screw up badly, they cannot breakthrough but are not even able to stop in time and crash disorderly into the defending squadron. Then the diekplous becomes a normal melee during which the attacking squadron will have a disadvantage.


These results make the diekplous an interesting choice for an admiral, but only in the right conditions! An average crew attempting it against another average crew would be successful only 20% and will disastrously fail 20%. Half of the times, 52%, the manoeuvre will be aborted with no damage, while around 8% will generate a messy melee. Hardly enticing, but could still be a choice if you really need to get a squadron out real fast... If the target squadron is poor, the success rate is 1 out of 3 that it works fine and just 1 out of 6 will end up in a katastrophe. This appears to be a more rational choice even if you are not in dire straits. If you have an elite squadron and are so lucky to face a poor one, then diekplous looks positively a good choice: it will work fine 35% of the time and fail only 9%!


Periplous would also be used with similar results as a diekplous when successful, but with a specific twist widely reported by ancient sources. If the periplous target unit was able to counter the periplous effectively, both squadrons ended up engaging in a race towards the open sea, as each tried to overcome the other in order to turn around its flank.


And that’s pretty much it. I am aiming for very simple rules that reflects only the key dynamics of V century naval warfare. I am looking forward to receive your feedback!

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9 Comments


trouten
Feb 18, 2023

I would like to try these. I will probably just use paper counters to try it.

Question: Do you have a recommended Order of Battle for two sides that would make a good but manageable intro to the rules?


Thank you for your dedication to this subject.

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trouten
Feb 20, 2023
Replying to

Awesome!

Thank you.

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tmjsimmons
Feb 07, 2023

Hi! Very interesting. We will try these next week I hope. I like the idea of signals. I would not be too restrictive on the range of available options, since it is fun to let players use their imagination. But modern gamers tend to underestimate the complications of communications in historical battles, especially at sea. Perhaps there could be a risk of increasing confusion as a player’s plan becomes more/over-complicated. For example: Admiral A has two prearranged signals, which his squadrons can obey without risk of getting it wrong. Admiral B has five prearranged signals for a really clever plan, but his squadron commanders get confused in the heat of battle and the plan falls apart. Maybe set an uppe…

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alkedominis
Feb 07, 2023
Replying to

Hi! many thanks for helping, do let me know how it goes and especially what you feel doesn't work. I did not want to restrict signals as well, but we'll see if it feasible to leave them so open. Fully agree on the need to limit them - I was hoping that the need to order the signals in chronological sequence will de facto impose a limit on how many signals each admiral can use. Also on this, we will see if it works or if I'll need to limit signalling by decree!

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matthypaspist
Feb 06, 2023

OK, I've read through the rules. Could you give a more detailed explanation of how signals work? Is it a signal for the whole fleet, or can you do them by squadron? The process of "first in, first out" for multiple signals makes sense, but I'm still vague on how that works. A general example would be helpful.

I very excited by these rules. (1) They seem to limit the strategoi's control to something a lot closer to what he could exercise. (2) The use of manouvers looks like it reflects what a fleet with a marked superiority in crew quality (which numerous ancient authors have cited as being decisive) could achieve. (3) It seems to me you could have…

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alkedominis
Feb 07, 2023
Replying to

Hi there, very glad you enjoy! so, signals are definitely something to be checked and see how it works. Imagine the night before the battle, you're sitting at the camp fire with your captains, and you tell them: "tomorrow we sail north and we'll meet the bastard Rhodians. When I raise a silver shield, we all deploy from column into line." In game terms, this means that the turn you play this signal, which you wrote down before the battle, all of your squadrons changing formation from column to line get a bonus at the manouver test. Simple as that. Or maybe at the fire you said "I want you, Skrotos, to take the three leftmost squadrons and encircle the…

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matthypaspist
Feb 05, 2023

I've started reading the rules. This is a very hard era for a miniature game. As you've observed, a lot of rule sets ask players to serve as the triaracrch, which is way more details that the strategoi would even know about, and makes really big battles (as historically happened) impossible to game. I really like level of control you've given the players, and I think you have some novel concepts that can make it work. Your use of signals reminds me (favorably) of orders in the Empire set of Napoleonic miniature rules, and your idea of manouvers reflects a deep understanding of recent scholarship on how these ships actually performed.

I have two initial questions. First, you say squadrons…

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alkedominis
Feb 06, 2023
Replying to

hi, many thanks for the kind comments. 1Avd is one average dice, which is a six sided dice with results 2-3-3-4-4-5 (basically you turn the 6 into a second 4, and the 1 into a second 3). You are correct in your reading of 2d6 and the tests, which are indeed all "roll x or more". Definitely need to clarify those points in the rules!

signals are the rule of which I am less sure about - love the concept, worried that it might be too ambiguous for players to apply. Might want to define exactly the orders which can be given. Or grab a copy of Empire to see how they did!

Looking forward for your further feedback!


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